©2025 League of Conservation Voters
1981 Scorecard Vote
137
267
28
Frank (D-MA) amendment to the fiscal year 1982 Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill to delete $17.8 million for the Stonewall Jackson Dam in West Virginia and prohibit further federal spending on the project. The Stonewall Jackson dam is one of the best examples of a proposed Army Corps of Engineers water project justified by a clearly unreasonable “cost/benefit analysis.” The Corps claimed that 47% of the benefits from this $216 million project will come from water quality improvement, yet federal water pollution and strip mining laws now provide for direct treatment or control of the pollutants at their discharge point — a far more effective method of reducing water pollution. 15% of the benefits are claimed for recreational facilities to be built and operated by the state, which the West Virginia Senate as announced it won’t fund. Other benefits are wildly overestimated, while the cost estimates for the dam assume an absurd interest rate of under 5%. The project would displace 1,050 residents and flood 10% of the county’s farmland in a state where agricultural land is scarce. Amendment rejected 137-267; July 23, 1981. YES is the pro-environmental vote.
©2025 League of Conservation Voters